The Experimental Hug
by ifwednesdaywasaflowerchild
Summary: Set after The Experimental Job. The memory of being in that cell, shivering in the twenty degree temperature, stays with Eliot. Leaves him trembling even after he's physically warmed up. Until Parker. Until her smile is like damn sunshine and she smells like flowers and she's so damn warm. Until she hugs him. And, the trembling stops. Finally.


She's warm.

 _God._

So warm. Hot, even. Burning with heat and, right now, Eliot Spencer would kill to feel warm, again. It'd been easy enough to ignore the slight tremble leftover from the twenty-degree cell. The way it spread out from his spine and crept down the back of his arms, pulling his skin taut in bumps. But then, she'd touched his arm. It'd been a brief touch after the team reunited but it'd been enough. Enough to feel the heat of her hand on his skin and set off a new set of tremors.

"Eliot," she's so bright and cheerful, when she appears next to him at the bar. Like freaking _sunshine._ Or, maybe she just seemed that way because he's craving heat, right now. "Are you okay?"

He sort of gives her that half-smile of his; the one that falls somewhere between exhaustion and most definitely not okay. And his voice is soft, shaky, reassurance weak at best; "I'm fine, darlin'."

Parker observes him carefully. The way Sophie taught her too. His eyes are heavy and his skin is paler than normal - not that she, you know, knows what color it _should_ be - she just knows he's not normally a pale person. Something is off. Really off about him. Gut instinct is rare for her but she goes with it and touches his shoulder.

 _Oh._

He's trembling.

Not nervous trembling or scared shaking, because Eliot never really got nervous or scared that she'd seen. "Why are you shaking, Eliot?"

"What? I'm not." but, her hand. Oh God. It's moving and the heat is spreading across his shoulders. "Damn it, Parker."

"What?"

Eliot forgets.

Not that often, but on rare occasions, he forgets that she doesn't know social cues. Not really. Sophie's trying her best but Parker still has trouble sometimes and he's had to fill in gaps before she dove off and blew her cover.

"It's the cell, right?" Parker mutters, moving a little closer. "The music was awful but the cold - you still feel it?"

His eyes slide closed and he drops his chin to his chest; "Parker."

"I know you told me not to ask you but that was about Moreau." her voice is soft, seeming to tuck itself between them, away from prying ears. "I don't understand most things but I know what it's like. That feeling when you remember something you don't want to. It's why I jump off of buildings."

"It was twenty degrees." Eliot murmurs. "I was shaking so hard, I could barely move and my lungs hurt."

She knows that feeling.

The Alaska job. The oxygen-thin air, the way her lungs burned with every icy breath, how her eyes had water and her nose had ran and turned red and she'd still felt the icy chill when they boarded a plane to leave. How, she had wrapped as many blankets as the attendant would give her around herself and curled herself into Eliot to find some sort of relief.

"Come here," she slides between him and the bar, sliding her arms around his shoulders, tugging him into her.

His arms wrap around her small waist and one of her hands slides up to cup the back of his neck, hot palm pressed to his skin. He feels warm to the touch but it's a mental thing, psychological, the chill that makes him tremble like this. It's not so much an actual chill, but the memory of it that makes him shiver. Her heat seeps through his clothes and presses intimately into his body and she rubs his neck, face buried in his shoulder.

For the first time since he got out of that damn cell, Eliot's starting to feel warm. He's not sure if it's the hug or just the fact that it is _Parker._

With the blazing body heat and the hot touch and the smile like sunshine. And she smells like jasmine and honeysuckle and how the hell does she smell like flowers when her entire life revolves around jumping off of buildings?

But, the trembling stops.

It _finally_ stops.

He breathes a silent sigh of relief and tugs her closer, hugs her tighter, and presses his face into the side of her head; "Thanks, darlin'."

In the corner, Nate grumbles.

Sophie tucks a crisp fifty dollar bill into her blouse.


End file.
